How Revenue Share Works - Advanced Affiliate Marketing

By Charlie Luzuka - General Manager

Show me the money!

In the world of performance marketing, quality is king. And so, the industry has moved towards a payment model that rewards quality over quantity. What does that mean? Well, instead of paying a small amount, say R2 per lead, campaigns look to share the upside from a converted sale with their lead channels in the form of Revenue Share. The most common ways in which you can earn on a revenue share model is by getting a percentage of the sale or earnings (when there is no fixed selling price per item).

Why do the earnings change?

In instances where the service given depends on the lead’s information, like in Insurance, earnings are impacted by a variety of things including but not exclusive to:

1. The lead’s salary
2. How long they’ve been driving.
3. The value of their car/household.
4. Their age.
5. Any pre-dispositions like illnesses for Life / Funeral cover
6. Their insurance profile.

This results in premiums that are rather unpredictable. The best way to improve the outcome of the premiums and therefore your share in the revenue earned is through the quality of the leads that you send.

Now getting your leads to be of a certain quality to maximise this payout is not easy and does take some optimization of your channels, but the rewards are well worth it. You can earn almost double what you would have on a CPL campaign.

So, how do you ensure quality of your leads?

1. Traffic source
2. Content utilised
3. Filtering measures

 

1. Your Traffic Source

The best source of traffic is one where you understand the lead intimately. No, you don’t need to be friends, but you do need to understand that a lead is, in essence, a person with needs and desires. Someone who wants to have something fulfilled and is willing to pay for it.

Ways for you to ensure you understand your “database” / audience well, is by conducting periodic surveys to better understand your base. Maintaining an updated database, stored safely and in compliance with relevant regulations is critical here. This can be done without spending too much cash by using free or low-cost tools online such as Google Forms or MailChimp.

Engaging with your audience in the comment sections can also give you insights into why certain posts or articles / blogs are enjoyed and why others aren’t. This can also help you with point 2, content utilised.

 

2. Your Content

Engaging your audience is a surefire way to increase the likelihood that they will click on any links you share with them. Gaining our audiences’ trust by sharing relevant knowledge and information with them, helps them feel comfortable to consider any offer that you’ve shared with them.

Utilising the information that you have about your audience can help you tailor your messaging towards sub-groups of your audience, which would make them feel like you are speaking to them i.e. an article about safeguarding your home for children and pets during the time of COVID 19 would appeal to a mother who is working from home but not so much to a student that feels pent up at home.

Writing articles that aren’t obviously about the product/service that you want to promote, also help to foster that trust. If we take the example from above, you could have a banner next to the article about medical aid/health insurance/pet insurance/home insurance, instead of mentioning insurance in the article.

You could write a separate article about how to optimise your insurance to manage the costs associated with COVID 19 and have it listed underneath the current article, as a related blog.

There are many options to build trust and give real value to your audience.

 

3. Filter your leads

Now, in theory, all leads should be good leads, right? I mean, you have to complete a form at some point, with relevant information that determines if you are indeed a valid lead or not.

Unfortunately, for a myriad of reasons, sometimes leads lie and that is a whole other blog. What we need to do to is to put measures in place that limit the number of “bad” leads that get sent to the Client, and therefore limit associated costs (to max out your gross profit).

So, what are some measures that can be put in place?

 

1. Ask for their ID number or cell phone number. The first test would be to determine if the lead has submitted a valid number. The second test is to identify if the lead is a duplicate or if it’s a unique/new entry to your database. To test validity, you can add formula or a format that will not allow the input of incorrect numbers (this can create false negatives if not input correctly). You may need to invest some time and money to automate a “dedupe” process, however, deduping upfront can save you money down the line.
2. The ID number can also be used to gauge the age of the lead, and with certain parameters set in place, this can filter out any leads that are most likely to fail i.e. a 17-year-old would not qualify for car insurance. A formula can be used to calculate their age and determine their gender against the campaign’s requirements.
3. Adding a CAPTCHA before the form is sent. This helps to determine how much the lead wants to send their form through, and also blocks out bots. There are captcha’s that cost money and some that are free, like Google’s reCaptcha. The cost is minimal and will earn itself back through improved quality of leads sent.